British Urged by Parliamentarians to Bring Resettlement of Refugees Before U.N.

November 17, 1946

London (Nov. 15)

The problem of the permanent resettlement of displaced Jews should be brought before the United Nations by the British Government in an attempt to find out what countries would be willing to accept them, it was stated today in a report issued by ten members of Parliament who recently investigated the administration of the British zone in Austria.

They pointed out that large numbers of Jews from Eastern Europe were in Austria and alleged that their exodus from their homelands in the hope of reaching Palestine was highly organized and financed by ample funds. The MP’s asserted that two camps in the province of Styria were full of able-bodied Jewish men and women who, they charged, pose a security problem since there are not enough British troops to guard them.

Although maintenance of Jewish DP’s does not place a burden on the British taxpayer at present, it will do so when UNRRA is liquidated, the investigators state, adding that the present immigration policy of the Jews necessitates the erection of camps on Cyprus whose cost falls entirely on Britain.

The report says that the “spiritual poison of Nazism has bitten deeply into the consciousness of the Austrian people,” and has become an unconscious part of the moral composition of even those Austrians who consider themselves anti-Nazis.